A statement of the facts and law to be referred to
which is filed by each party in a legal application, appeal or motion. In
British legal practice, a factum is only an outline of the arguments to be
raised on appeal, together with citations to a few leading cases on each point.
American legal practice relies much more heavily on written argument and the
appellate brief may contain the entire argument as counsel may not be given
enough time to present an oral argument. Canadian legal practice is often a
mixture of the two systems with counsel presenting both a comprehensive oral
presentation and written factum.[i]

In their Factum[ii]
before the Supreme Court in spring 2004, the UCC said the following (extracts
in blue are sequential):

Factum Extract: The United Church is the largest Protestant
denomination in Canada, with approximately 650,000 members and 200,000
adherents. It has been in existence since 1925. It is a member of the World Council of Churches. The United Church can therefore be
considered a mainstream, established Christian church.

Reliability Note1. The orthodox interveners opposed
to the UCC position should have cross-examined the UCC on their claim to be a
mainstream, established Christian denomination. In view of their professed beliefs and their
day-to-day operations, the organization is demonstrably apostate; their
credibility as a Christian witness is seriously flawed.

Factum Extract: However, unlike some other
mainstream, established Christian churches which are interveners in the
reference, the United Church both supports same-sex marriage and makes same-sex
marriage ceremonies available to its members.

Factum Extract: Although marriage is not a
sacrament in the United Church, the United Church does place an extremely high
value on the seriousness of the vows made in the presence of God and
witnesses. The United Church supports all
life-long relationships of care, justice, mutuality and faithfulness.

Reliability Note 2. Consider the later
assertion in the context of these policy decisions: 1962 -
sanction divorce and remarriage;[iii]1965 - condone pre-marital sex;[iv]1980 -
issue sex report approving of marriage infidelity: “it [fidelity] includes
openness to secondary relationships of emotional intimacy and potential genital
expression but with commitment to the primary marriage;”[v]and, 2000 - Bisexual relationships affirmed as divinely sanctioned. The UCC has a misleading way of stating what
in practice is an “all inclusive” anything goes doctrine. Everything is subject to the tacit, if not
explicit, caveat that one’s truth cannot trump another person’s truth. The 2005 document, Faith Talk
II[vi]
states the theological paradox this way: “While believing that our faith is grounded in truth, our truth need not
deny the truths of others.” Choice Okoro, UCC Program Officer for Human
Rights, puts the notion into practice supporting same-sex marriage. She said:

The United
Church unequivocally supports the right of same-sex couples to have access to
civil marriage, it also unequivocally supports the right of religious
communities to refuse to perform such marriages. The United Church does not believe that the faith stance of a
community which supports same-sex marriage undermines the faith stance of a
community that does not.

Thus, the fact that the UCC
declares support for “life-long
sexual relationships” does not imply, in their worldview, that they cannot also support
short-term sexual intimacies. In this
context, the characteristics - care,
justice, mutuality and faithfulness, which they assert as evidence of
relationships worth supporting, hold little weight in differentiating the good
from the bad. For a majority of
homosexuals, these qualities neither preclude bathhouse affairs nor following
relationship guidance such as Eric Marcus gives in The Male Couple’s Guide:
Finding A Man, Making A Home, Building A Life. His key to maintaining a lasting relationship is to set some
boundaries:

(1) Sex with
other partners is allowed, but must be kept secret. (2) Sex with other partners
is allowed, but must be discussed. (3)
Sex is not permitted with mutual friends.
(4) Only anonymous sexual encounters are permitted. (5) Sex is permitted only when one partner
is out of town. (6) Sex with other
partners is not permitted at home. (7)
Sex with other partners is permitted at home, but not in the couple’s
bedroom. (8) Outside sex is permitted,
but only when both partners choose a third to join them.[vii]

The
homosexist, liberal, all-inclusive stance of the UCC prevents the denomination
from doctrinally alienating the 95 percent of the homosexual community who are
not interested in monogamous, life-long, single-spouse marriages. It would be interesting to have the UCC
comment on this website as to whether Marcus’s guidance is sinful or ungodly
advice. The orthodox interveners should
have cross-examined the UCC on their interpretation of homosexual marriage; on
whether the denomination henceforth declares sexual relations outside of
marriage a sin (regardless of orientation); on whether sexual relations with
other than the marital spouse is a sin; and whether the common homosexual
practice of secondary intimate partners is a sin under all circumstances? Here again, the likely answers are
self-evident, the UCC has no intention of condemning the majority of
homosexuals for the moral equivalent of fornication. The denomination’s credibility as a Christian
witness is acutely flawed, ill-suited for testimony on marriage
redefinition before the Supreme Court.

Factum Extract: Theologically and liturgically,
the United Church understands both opposite-sex and same-sex couples as sharing
the same human dignity of being made in the image of God. There is therefore no theological impediment
that would prevent same-sex couples from participating in this union, which is
one of the fullest expressions of the covenant between God and humanity. To the contrary, excluding same-sex couples
from this expression of the covenant relationship undermines their human basic dignity.[my underlines]

Factum Extract: As of February 2004 the United
Church had reported 120 same-sex marriages in thirteen congregations. Since July 2003, well over 1000 ceremonies [union
blessings] have been performed…

Reliability Note 3. In these two
statements the UCC gave the secular humanistic justice system what they longed
for – a way through, over or around religious opposition to marriage redefinition. Like a “Christian” quisling, the UCC made
effective resistance within Christendom meaningless by becoming a breach in the
wall of orthodoxy, which had stood for 2,000 years. Sadly for the denomination, in fulfilling this role of
undermining authentic Christian resistance, the UCC stooped to the
unprecedented low of parroting terminologies taken exclusively from humanist
lexicon – human basic dignity! Imagine,
for 2,000 years Christians, including Apostle Paul, Martin Luther, Calvin, an
endless line of Popes, and for a much much longer, the Jews of history have
been totally blind to the inalienable, human basic dignity of same-sex
marriage. The unholy collaboration of
this church (UCC) and the agenda of the
state (Supreme Court) is further evidenced through the observations of Iain T. Benson, lawyer and Executive Director of the Centre for Cultural
Renewal. In “The Idolatry of Law: When Law is Seen as ‘Like
Religion’,” Benson warns Canadians to be aware of a totalitarian “jurocracy,”
where judges deem themselves capable of replacing morals, philosophy, or
religion and making their own wills the measure of right and wrong. In a jurocracy an elitist party usurps their
proper role in a democracy. Benson
writes:

This
new legal movement uses the language of ‘equality’ and ‘dignity’ (the
first of which is in the constitution itself) to effect ends that are well
beyond the usual judicial role. In this
new juggernaut of forced consensus, what is really at issue is the power of
judges to force their own personal moral and theological beliefs upon
society. Under the guise of ‘legal
interpretation,’ the ‘new theologians,’ believing law is comprehensive,
promulgate the dogmatic rules of the day.[viii][my
underline]

The construct of everyone
with “equal dignity” before God as a justification for homosexual
marriage access is a peculiar one, especially when asserted by self-professed
Christians. The Bible declares we are
all made in His image. It also declares
we are equally ranked as sinners, equally lost from God at birth: “As it is written there is none
righteous, no not one” (Romans3: 10). “For all
have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3: 23). If the intent of the UCC notion of “equal
dignity”
was to proclaim homosexual offenders, of no different ranking, no less
dignified, their sin no more of an indignity before God than heterosexual
offenders, then Amen. But clearly, it
is not. The UCC does not believe in
original sin and the church believes all are saved. The term “born again” in Christ is absent from UCC lexicon. To assert the humanist notion that “equal
dignity”
justifies marriage access, pro-gay theologians must make a case that sodomy and
oral sex among consenting homosexuals, particularly if married and monogamous,
holds equal dignity with heterosexual intercourse between spouses. Such a liberal presupposition is an
appalling theological travesty. Sodomy
has been legal since the release of George Klippert, jailed for gross indecency in
the 1960s; however, the behavior remains no less of an offence before God. The
fact is, the gay lifestyle is not only behaviorally undignified,
but for the overwhelming majority of men, it is perilously dangerous. The threat of HIV and AIDS within the
homosexual community causes very real stress, deep depression and low
self-esteem. The undignified
and unavoidable relationship of AIDS to gay sexual behavior was first pointed
out by Columbia researchers Martina Morris and Laura Dean in their ground
breaking paper on the effects of behavioral change on the spread of HIV. They said:

Under the optimistic scenario where the average number of new, unsafe
sexual partners per year does not increase above one, the virus could affect
less than five percent of the gay population by the year 2030. But with an
average of two new unsafe partners per year, instead of the reported one, the
virus would continue to be transmitted at epidemic levels and infect about 25
percent of younger men and about 60 percent of men who reach their late 40s.[ix]

The
orthodox interveners should have cross-examined the UCC on their interpretation
of “equal dignity” before God and filed an objection based on the fact
that UCC is offering patently unchristian testimony, while claiming to be
Christian. Any unbiased judge, any
Christian with eyes to see, would agree with what homosexual, Andrew Holleran,
declares to be self-evident:

The attempt of gay men to
merge their Catholicism with homosexuality has always seemed to me touching but
doomed. I used to walk past the church
on Sixteenth Street in New York where I knew Dignity – an organization for gay
Catholics – was meeting, but I never went in.
I felt sorry for the men inside, sympathetic to their attempt, and
superior to what seemed to me their naiveté.
Don’t even try, I thought, as I walked past, on the way from the gym to
the bath (my new church), you’re just kidding yourselves. There can be no commerce between, no
conflation of, these two things.
Fellatio has nothing to do with Holy Communion. Better to frankly admit that you have
changed gods, and are now worshipping Priapus, not Christ.[x]

Factum Extract: The exclusion of same-sex couples from
civil marriage is based upon and perpetuates stereotypical assumptions about
same-sex couples: that their relationships are less permanent, that they are
incapable of commitment, and that they cannot form healthy families. However, same-sex couples do have relationships of permanence, they do make commitments to each other and
they do form healthy families.

Factum Extract: The societal significance of marriage
cannot be overemphasized. Marriage is a
benchmark by which Canadian society names the everyday development of love and
intimacy between a couple. For many
people, marriage ritualizes the sanctity of love through the very means by
which people convert houses into homes, food into customs of community, and sex
into love.

Reliability Note 4. Marriage (in the Christian worldview) is
about monogamy and can never ritualize sodomy and oral sex into sanctified love. These sexual acts may be the customs
of the community but they are an outrage to a Holy God. Moreover, the 1994 National Health and Social Life Survey (US)[xi]revealed that 75per cent of
heterosexual men and 85 per cent of heterosexual women said they had never cheated
in their marriage. On the other hand,
Robert Williams, the first openly gay Episcopal priest to be ordained, declared
in Newsweek, “If people want to try, OK. But the fact is, people are not
monogamous. It is crazy to hold up this
ideal… ”[xii]Mark Steyn makes a severe point in the American Spector: “A grisly plague has not furthered the cause of homosexual monogamy,
so why should a permit from a town clerk.”[xiii]And
Gareth Kirby, editor of Xtra West,
reports that among Vancouver gays, “only
two per cent were in long-term relationships.”[xiv]Marriage redefinition has opened the institution to further assault by the
hostile promiscuous majority.

Some advocates raise the
notion that same-sex marriage will increase monogamy and reduce the incidence
of sexually transmitted disease.
However, the opposite affect occurs.
As previously stated, Martina Morris and Laura Dean found that two
“unsafe” connects a year would sustain the level of HIV in the gay population
at 60 per cent. Sadly, one unsafe
contact per year is a level of monogamy with little precedent in gay
culture. Furthermore, Cindy Patton, in Sex & Germs, writes that gay
monogamy does not“In the San Francisco study, men in monogamous couples, in primary
relationships with some sexual activity outside the relationship…nearly all
agreed that they hadn’t implemented desired [safe-sex] changes because they
perceived their partner(s) to be unwilling to make that change.”[xv] Frank Browning writes of a 1990
study, “…unattached gay men were
significantly less likely to expose themselves to HIV through risky sex than
were men in serial monogamous relationships.”[xvi] increase risk-reduction practice. She says:

Catherine Wallace, author
of Accounting for Fidelity, illustrates the paradox in the UCC human
rights claim of “sameness” and “equal dignity” for homosexuals in the following
brief vignette. She relates a story
involving her young sons:

‘Does Daddy use condoms?’ I stopped grinding coffee beans and
looked across the dark, November-morning kitchen at my eight-year-old son, who
had set aside his raisin toast with peanut butter…‘Mark [fifth grade] says -
Mark says the teacher says if you don’t use condoms then you could both get
sick and die. So we want to know. Does he?
Every time?’[xvii]

The
orthodox interveners should have cross-examined
the UCC on their assertion of homosexual monogamy as cause for marriage
access. And they should have filed an
objection to the evidence submitted, on the basis that the UCC is falsely
claiming to be Christian, and falsely asserting that their argument complies
with Christian theology.

Factum
Extract: The United Church
does not agree with the AGC [Attorney General of Canada] that the purpose of
marriage is procreation; procreation is one aspect and purpose of marriage but
not the defining or only purpose. The
other, equally important purposes of marriage include fostering intimacy,
companionship and respect, creating and sustaining community, and, in the case
of religious marriage, expressing commitment to and communion with God. No rational connection exists between
the exclusion of same-sex couples and any of these purposes, including
procreation. Same-sex couples can and
do have and raise children.

Factum
Extract: In any event, it is absurd
to suggest that allowing same-sex couples to have access to the institution of
marriage somehow undermines the institution.

Reliability Note 5. There is an absurd irrationality
and rudeness in the UCC asserting: (1) that it is a Christian denomination; (2)
that it believes there is no absolute truth; and (3) that it is ok if members
and congregations are against same-sex marriage; and yet declare to the Supreme
Court that all who oppose marriage redefinition are ridiculously
illogical. [The issue of why a
relatively few orthodox believers [COC and NACC], the so-called
“UCC reformers,” persist in remaining within the UCC is intriguing, worthy of
separate analysis. These reformers
appear to place greater importance on denominational loyalty than on Christ. After four decades of continuous abuse
within the UCC, they need to respond to these questions: “What heresy would it
take to dislodge you from your UCC pew?”
“If not, the denial of the divinity of Jesus Christ; if not homosexual
ordination, if not same-sex marriage, what could possibly open your eyes to
flee?” “Do you think that the hundreds
of thousands who were burdened, over the decades, to escape the apostasy were
falsely called out of the United Church?”

Whether by evolution or by
divine intent, all must agree that the human species is male and female. Like a lock and key, man and woman have
matched designs for procreation. For
this reason (the mixing of human gene pools) the state allows marriage between
one man and one woman but discriminates against marriage to a close relative, a
son, a daughter, a sister, a brother, a father or a mother. This prohibition is so strong that sex
amongst these relations is illegal and defined as incest. If we now say marriage is no longer about
procreation, then the prohibition on the marriage of a brother to a sister
appears unjustly discriminatory from in a homosexist worldview and incest
becomes a defunct notion. After
disconnecting marriage from its heterosexual procreative moorings, the question
becomes: “Why can’t a brother have sex with a brother or a father with a son,
if so oriented?” No offspring are at
genetic risk. Ironically, any reference
to the morality of these acts begs the questions: “If it is ok for two men to
have sex, why is it wrong for two brothers?”
If they were married would this make a difference? The fact the Supreme
Court refrained from ruling traditional marriage unconstitutional is no
surprise. First, if same-sex marriage
was truly human rights entitlement based on “sexual orientation,” then bisexuals
should be given access. The UCC makes
no attempt to introduce the complications of bisexual marriage to their
patently unchristian dissertations.
That the state has yet to entertain the marriage rights of other sexual
orientation groups reflects the political nature of the issue and refutes the
notion that marriage redefinition is a matter of human dignity. Second, for perpetuation of the species
societies have developed cultural notions of masculine and feminine
genders. Proponents of same-sex marriage
assert there is no essential relationship between the body (anatomy and
genitalia) and gender. Accordingly, the
two-sex system is no longer to be privileged over the same sex system. The notion of a purposeful design in male
and female (called “heterosexism”) is defunct as a result of redefining
marriage.

Frankly,
the absurdity lies in calling two men and a child equal to the Biblical
family. Blinded by the spirit of
homosexism, the UCC cannot see the irony in - “Dad, who’s my mother?” “I don’t
know son. Ask your father.” Blinded by
the spirit of humanism, the UCC cannot see the paradox in asserting that
children don’t need a mother or a father, any two of the same sex will do. The heterosexual family is a purposeful
design, from which all other “habitations”
are departures. Gertrude Himmelfarb
says of unbiblical adaptations, “This is
parentage, and ‘alternative lifestyles.’
The ‘family of choice’ is defined not by lines of blood, marriage, or
adoption, but by varieties of relationships and habitations among ‘autonomous,’
‘consensual’ adults and their offspring.”[xviii]
The vision in a post nuclear family era is that the parent can share parenthood
and exchange children. Homosexual
relationships - some sexual, some mentoring, some fraternal, some utilitarian -
commonly involve more than two individuals.
A typical variant “family” is the gay man with a lover who chooses to
have a child with a lesbian who also has a lover. Mona Greenbaum, of the Lesbian Mothers Association of Quebec,
claims that lesbians should have the same access to fertility technology that
married heterosexual women have.[xix] But why should lesbian couples be privileged
over gay couples, applying Greenbaum’s logic? Without human cloning, same-sex couples cannot
procreate. Brigitte Boisselier,
director of CLONAID, claims there is already demand for cloning among gay
couples.[xx]

The
heterosexual system of marriage and family is the chief obstacle to an
experimental, humanistic and technocratic future. If traditional marriage endures, the realm of the state and the
development and use of the technology can be limited. George Gilder, in “Men and
Marriage” warns, “If the family
should widely breakdown, then the world of artificial wombs, clones and
child-development centers would become an important reality rather than a
laboratory curiosity.”[xxi]

The
orthodox interveners should have cross-examined
the UCC on their assertion that a same-sex parenting family is normative,
indeed, equal to a family with a mother and a father. The orthodox interveners should have also filed an objection to the evidence
submitted, on the basis that the UCC is falsely claiming to be Christian, while
asserting that the traditional Christian worldview is irrational and absurd.

Factum
Extract: The religious freedom of
religious communities who object to same-sex marriage is not infringed by the
proposed legislation. They cannot be
compelled to offer marriages which violate their beliefs. The mere fact that civil marriage is
available to same-sex couples does not constitute an attack on the religious
beliefs of those who are opposed to same-sex marriage, any more than the fact
that some people do not observe the Christian Sabbath constitutes an attack on
the beliefs of those who do. More
importantly, the United Church does not believe that the faith stance of a
community which supports same-sex marriage undermines the faith stance of a
community that does.

Reliability
Note 6. There are tacit, if not blatant layers of charade and spiritual
naivety in claiming that one faith stance does not affect the other. One only need look inside the UCC to see the
paradox. The UCC Factum records how the
Elmsdale Pastoral Charge applied this theologically double minded maneuver to
address a request by two homosexuals to be married:

One
congregation decided not to vote. One
congregation, through their Session, decided they were not ready to accept
same-sex marriages in the church building, but would be open to further
discussion about the Minister performing marriages outside the church
building. The third congregation
decided at the Board level not to have a congregational vote, but passed a
motion affirming the present marriage policy which is as follows: That the
Minister may marry people at her discretion if they have a valid marriage
license.

The orthodox interveners should have cross-examined the UCC on their anything-goes
theology. It is evident the UCC just
doesn’t care what people think as long as everyone has their individual
freedom. Their premise can only work if
the believer concludes God does not care either. But what is the dissenting minority in a congregational vote to
do, bite the bullet and stay, or leave?
The orthodox interveners should
have filed an objection to the evidence submitted, on the basis that the UCC is
falsely claiming to be Christian, while asserting doctrine fundamentally in
line with Gnostic theology. Kurt Rudolph, professor of History of
Religion, explains Tertullian’s view of the Gnosticism, which I assert reflects
UCC thinking:

Tertullian long ago, before modern
investigation gathered together the numerous groups and movements of the heresy
of the period under the general designation ‘gnosis’, had grasped their
essential elements. For him Gnosis is a ‘declining syncretism’ such as the
natural spirituality of mankind loves, a spiritual and idealistic overestimate
of the self which blurs the fixed limits that separate the creature from the
deity; and it is at the same time the ‘nihilistic’ hostility against God of
reality who has created the world and has revealed himself concretely in the
flesh.[xxii]

Christendom
needs to recognize the magnitude of the UCC Factum heresy and the impact their
religious liberalism has had on the state adopting a homosexist worldview. Moreover, Canadian believers need to measure
the disservice done by the acquiescent role that orthodox interveners played in
allowing the United Church, so-called “Christian,” witness to stand. What God thinks about the whole same-sex
marriage judicial process and the UCC assertions is cause for deep
reflection. The following phrase is
either the greatest divine revelation of the twentieth century overturning the
orthodox worldview or the assertion is greatest act of blasphemy.

There is therefore no theological impediment that
would prevent same-sex couples from participating in this union, which is one
of the fullest expressions of the covenant between God and humanity.